Sunday, July 11, 2010

Iowa has been, for years, I don't know how long, a state where the sheriffs issued concealed carry permits based on the discretion of the sheriff, or what is commonly called a may-issue system. The sheriff may issue a permit based on his own discretion, and is not required to issue a permit.

Those of us who are purists have real trouble finding the concept of may-issue permits in the text of this Constitutional statement,

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In my humble opinion is takes a real serious case of mental absurdity to find in that text the ability of some two-bit County Mountie to deny a God given right. Of course I'm not a sleazy lawyer, nor do I desire to play one on TV.

In the last legislative session here in Iowa, a friend of mine introduced for the second year in a row, a bill was based on a Vermont style carry law. Here is an excerpt of a position paper from Gun Owners of America of which I am a member on the subject.

Several states are considering adopting "Vermont-style" concealed carry legislation. Most of the Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) laws in the country require citizens to first get permits. But in a couple of states, like Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission . . . without paying a fee . . . or without going through any kind of government- imposed waiting period. There are many reasons for a state to adopt a genuine right to carry law:

1. Carrying a firearm is a "right" not a "privilege"

The Second Amendment guarantees that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This means that law-abiding citizens should not need to beg the government for permission to carry a firearm. That would turn the "right" to bear arms into a mere "privilege." Likewise, one should not have to be photographed, fingerprinted, or registered before they can exercise their Second Amendment rights. Criminals certainly do not jump through these "hoops." The Second Amendment is no different than any of the other protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights. That is, honest citizens should not need a government issued permission slip; rather, they should be able to carry as a matter of right.

What we got instead was a compromise deal between the NRA and the sodomy loving Demoncrat president of the Iowa Senate, which allowed a bill that made shall-issue the law in Iowa. Now this is an improvement over what we had, but we were one vote short of getting the Vermont style law last year. And in an attempt to keep that from happening, the NRA sold out the Iowa gun owners to claim victory in getting a shall-issue bill.

As a side note, it should not surprise anyone that the NRA may endorse Harry Reid in his Senate Race in New Mexico. Anything it takes for NRA to keep itself in a position of power seems to be the current mode of operation at NRA.

Anyway, Iowa is now going to be a shall-issue state. The sheriff must issue a permit, unless he can provide a written reason explaining his reason for refusing to issue a permit. This legislation passed near the end of April, and goes into effect later this year.

I still intend to fight for a Vermont style law. I'm assuming I will be fighting against the NRA and it big money interests, but I will continue to fight.

I was motivated to write about this issue after a verdict was announced in a recent court case here involving an acquaintance of mine. Rather than try to explain the details I'm just going to link to several articles on the subject, ......

They say you’re never too old to learn, but one sheriff who ran afoul of the First Amendment won’t have a choice.

A federal judge upbraided Osceola County, Iowa, Sheriff Douglas L. Weber this week for denying a concealed weapon permit to an Iowa man because he engaged in frequent political advocacy. So egregious were the sheriff’s actions, the judge found, that the judge ordered Weber back to school for a court approved course on the Constitution. See here for story in the Sioux City Journal. (h/t: The Volokh Conspiracy)

“In denying Paul a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections,” wrote Federal Judge Mark Bennett in the opinion. “Ironically, Sheriff Weber, sworn to uphold the Constitution, in fact retaliated against a citizen of his county who used this important freedom of speech and association precisely in the manner envisioned by the founding members of our nation.”

Paul Dorr, who filed the suit, was denied the permit because people considered him strange as a result of his political activities, which included gathering information on the size of the county budget. By way of explanation for the denial, Weber wrote on Dorr’s application, “Concern from Public. Don’t trust him.”

Bennett writes in his ruling that it is often difficult to determine what drives an individual’s decisions in a case like this, but Weber’s testimony was so forthcoming that it didn’t leave a shred of doubt.

“The court finds a tsunami, a maelstrom, an avalanche, of direct, uncontroverted evidence in Sheriff Weber’s own testimony to conclude beyond all doubt that he unquestionably violated the First Amendment rights of at least Paul Dorr,” he wrote.

Dorr, unsurprisingly, was quite happy with the ruling. “Justice is served,” he told the Sioux City paper Wednesday. “I get my permit back and the sheriff is being sent back to school. The harm done by Sheriff Weber against the 6th and 9th commandments has been made right.”

The paper couldn’t reach the sheriff for comment on the case or the required class. Judge Bennett, for his part, seems quite comfortable giving a lecture himself:

“This is a great reminder that the First Amendment protects the sole individual who may be a gadfly, kook, weirdo, nut job, whacko, and spook, with the same force of protection as folks with more majoritarian and popular views.”

And I want to say that this kind of behavior by sheriffs is exactly why I want a Vermont style law as opposed to the Shall-Issue which we will soon have as Law.

If a sheriff will knowingly violate the rights of a citizen thy way Sheriff Weber violated Paul Dorr's rights, by what logical standard can we expect that same kind of sheriff to justly and fairly exercise his position when the shall-issue system is in place. I believe that some sheriffs will find every way possible to continue to deny gun owners the right to carry by using every illegal, immoral and underhanded tactic they can think of to refuse to issue carry permits. Just like Sheriff Weber did to Paul Dorr. They will have to work harder at it, they will have to issue more permits than they previously did, but my guess is that we will continue to hear accounts of lawful citizens denied they Constitutional rights by sheriffs who have no regard for the rights of the citizen,

Friday, June 4, 2010

I used to ride a bike a lot when I was a kid. Had one for getting around when I was in college. Went on several rides around Saylorville Lake in those days. Now that I'm old, I haven't been on a bike for several years. But, I wonder could I take up competitive cycling if I had one of these bikes?

I have a fair collection of Dewalt cordless power tools. And I've always wondered how they could be used to power a bike. I think we have an answer.

And no I couldn't ride competitively, unless they have a class for fat guys.

Monday, May 17, 2010

A while ago you asked if there were common around here. And the answer is, sorta.

Since so much of the land is tilled for agricultural purposes, the areas where you can find them are limited. But, in those areas, we seem to have the proper rainfall and temperature for a healthy crop. A good friend of mine found several hundred of them earlier this year. I went to a county park and looked for a while one evening, found nothing.

This evening one of the twins was mowing along the grove and found these.

Now an update on the chickens. They are at the ugly stage. Lost all the downy yellow fuzz, and have very small feathers on the wings. Otherwise they are butt naked and butt ugly. On the second week we had them we had a cold snap in the weather, it got too cold in the barn, even though they were under heat lamps. So I put some old Ron Paul campaign signs around the room for the chickens and hung a LB White, LP gas heater in there for about a week and a half. We lost 12 from them piling up when it got too cold.

On Friday I took the day off. At 7:00am we left the kids at a friends place, then the lovely Mrs. farmer and I drove to western Iowa pulling a 24 ft trailer with a couple of sign/billboards to put in the back of a pickup for a parade. I'm helping a group of concerned citizens here in the area fight back against the lawless decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, which advocated granting sodomy permission certificates.

After we dropped off the sign in western Iowa, we went to my folks place, picked up a busted lawn tractor, which I need to work on as well as an old chicken nesting box which needs some major work. After we get these broilers raised, we may get a few laying chickens.

From my folks place we went to Des Moines for a meeting at 3:00, then parked the trailer in Ankeny, then visited some relatives for a few minutes.

We left Ankeny, went down East 14th to Euclid, went west two blocks and ate our supper at the Iowa Beef Steakhouse. Good food, decent price, good service. No complaints.

With our stomachs full we then ventured into downtown Des Moines to the Embassy Suites. Campaign for Liberty held a regional conference there. I joined Gun Owners of America for a year. Shook hands with several political types. Then heard speeches from Jan Mickelson of WHO Radio,( a Christian Libertarian), Thomas Woods author of Meltdown, and the honorable Ron Paul. A very enjoyable evening.

Picked up the trailer in Ankeny on the way back north. Got home about 11:30.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

We ordered 150 chicks from the local hatchery on Tuesday the 13th, they were hatched on Monday the 19th, and my wife picked them up from the USPS on Tuesday morning the 20th at 7:20 am. So, on or around the 25th of May we will once again be butchering chickens.

Since last years chickens got rather large, 10 lb average, we will be butchering before eight weeks of age. And because we got a new video camera, we will try to post pictures over the next few weeks showing the growth of the chickens.

He is a short video taken in the afternoon, on Tuesday.

Sorry Res, no ducks this time. Maybe later in the year.

We still have a few which remain unspoken for, so if you are interested say something in the comments, or email me.

In other news.

We are somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 done planting for the year. All of the hog pits have been pumped and hauled. We are far ahead of the seasonal schedule, and even farther ahead of last year.

I'm supposed to go to the Repugnant Party district convention this weekend. We'll see if the weather allows that? The governors race is heating up here in Iowa. We have a three way contest, with the former governor Bumstead, who held office for 16 years, raised taxes thirty times, introduced legalized gambling, and had as his Lt. Governor a Planned Parenthood activist, and current sodomy marriage supporter, seeking a 5th term. Then we have a very nice, polite, standard issue, conservative Republican, who has served 5 terms in the State Senate, without ever making a name for himself by doing anything of note, a typical party man who shows no real abilities as a leader, just a party man. And a relatively young former educator, businessman, consultant from northwest Iowa. He has pledged to fight the Iowa Supreme Courts ruling on sodomy marriage, by issuing an executive order staying the ruling until the legislature changes the law or amends the Iowa Constitution. He is promising to take the funding of the education away from the state and give it back to the parents of school children (60 percent of the state budget), he wants to challenge the Obama healthcare fiasco on 10th Amendment grounds and yesterday, he endorsed an Oklahoma/Arizona type immigration reform.

Shouldn't be a difficult choice. But, I'm quite certain that the Repugnant establishment has got the second guy in the race to take votes away from the third. We have not had a true "conservative" candidate for governor in Iowa in twelve years who did not face a three way race. The establishment is very anti christian conservative. They are more concerned about retaining power for a handful of elites in Des Moines, than in seeing actual change in the current system.

My guess is that Bumstead will win the party nomination, and the Demoncrats will retain the governorship because those of us on the far right side of the aisle will either not vote, or vote third party in the general election.

Friday, February 19, 2010

I have to do a little speech in a few days, related to my worldview. Explaining why I hold my spiritual, political and personal views. The group I'm speaking to is specifically concerned with family issues.

Remember Hitchens interview in which he asserts that if you don't believe X you really can't call yourself a Christian!! Well, I'm a Christian fundamentalist. I don't consider anyone who doesn't hold to the five fundamentals of the faith to be a Christian.

As a point of reference we'll use the following as the five.

1. The Deity of Christ2. The Virgin Birth3. The Blood Atonement 4. The Bodily Ressurection5. The Physical Return of Christ

Now, as a fundamentalist, I think that there are certain absolutes/truths which follow in two other areas. We'll call them civil government, and family.

What would you consider five fundamentals in each of those areas?

Civil Government

1. God has established government and has power over it.

2. Government's first duty is to punish evil.

3. Power comes out of the people.?

4.

5.

Family

1. Marriage One Man, One Woman, for life.

2. Children are a blessing from the Lord.

3. Education is the responsibility of the parents.

4. Old age care of parents is the responsibility of the children.

5.

I think you get the idea. Now, please help me fill in the blanks, start over, make a better list, .................

I have to give this speech next week.

All your help would be appreciated.

And if the troll/human weed shows up, don't respond to it, I'm going to delete all of it's comments.

Monday, February 8, 2010

I don't know the proper etiquette for the following post. Am I supposed to just link to it or cut and paste it? Whatever, I'll do both!

It is not my work. It comes from the guys at WHO Radio in Des Moines. Jan Mickelson is my favorite talk show host, bar none. I have been listening to him since 1989? and I sincerely believe he is one of the best at his craft ever. His letter is posted by Steve Deace the afternoon host at WHO. Deace is slowly learning the truth. He started out as a Republican bootlicker, and has now learned enough to be an independent who is despised by the Repugnant party.

The letter is in response to one from Hector Avalos the atheist religious studies professor at Iowa State University. Dr. Avalos is one of the leaders of the group that help keep Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez ("The Privileged Planet") from getting tenure. Gonzales story is one of those featured in "Expelled" by Ben Stein.

I went to a "debate" between Avalos and Mickelson at Iowa State, featuring a topic related to sodomy marriage. Mickelson didn't really so much debate as throw hand grenades, which amused the large crowd of supporters and enraged the small contingent of sodomites.

So these two have a very public history. And it is clear that Mickelson enjoys sticking in the knife and twisting it, before he pulls it out and sticks it in again.

Deace's Daily Diary: February 8th, 2010Monday 02-08-2010 8:08am CTThere are times you come across something that somebody has written that makes you realize you can't possibly top their work, so you just get out of the way and let it speak for itself.

2) This is so good nothing I could possibly write today as the Sultan of Snark himself could top this, so why try to reinvent the wheel?

Guest commentary:Haiti’s suffering is ungodly

By Hector AvalosSpecial to The Tribune

Published: Saturday, February 6, 2010 11:45 PM CST

Haitians were just starting to be dug out from collapsed buildings, when Pat Robertson, the televangelist and former presidential candidate, told us he knew what had caused Haiti’s horrific earthquake.

Hint: It was not geology.

As Robertson phrased it on his show, The 700 Club (Jan. 13): “They (Haitians) were under the heel of the French ... And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you get us free from the French.” Haiti’s earthquake and poverty are punishment for that pact.

Where do Robertson’s ideas come from? The earliest trace of any legend of a Haitian “pact to the Devil” is a book on the history of Haiti (titled, “Histoire de la Révolution de Saint-Domingue”) published in 1814 by a French inhabitant of Haiti named Antoine Dalmas.

According to Dalmas, on the first night of the Haitian revolution (Aug. 20 to 21, 1791), some slaves at a plantation drank the blood of a black pig sacrificed to an African deity. The ritual supposedly made participants invincible.

That’s pretty much it. Later writers added more dramatic and uncorroborated details, including an oath. Since the ceremony involved nothing beyond a few hundred slaves, it cannot be described as an entire nation making a pact.

Nonetheless, Dalmas describes a ceremony associated with Voodoo, the collective name for diverse African religious traditions, which were often combined with Christian elements, in Haiti.

Voodoo, now an officially recognized Haitian religion, was often denigrated as devil-worship by Christian slavemasters. Robertson simply continues this demonization of African religions.

And as for poverty being God’s punishment for Voodoo, a World Bank study, titled Social Resilience and State Fragility in Haiti (2007), calculates a poverty rate of 47 percent for Voodoo practitioners, 49 percent for Catholics and 51 percent for Baptists. Therefore, Haitian Christians actually are slightly poorer.

Furthermore, Haitian slaves did not see just the “French” as their oppressors. Haitians saw white Christians enslaving them. Since Christianity was not helping them, slaves appealed to their African gods. Slaves could argue the appeal worked because Haiti became the only nation established by a successful slave revolt.

However, Haitians paid a price for liberty. First, their revolution devastated the sugar industry, the heart of their economy. Revenues plummeted.

France also imposed a price of 150 million francs (perhaps tens of billions in today’s dollars) to recognize Haiti’s nationhood in 1825. Paying that debt with already limited resources proved difficult. It took Haiti until 1947 to pay it off.

Moreover, big slave-trading countries initially refused official recognition of Haiti’s nationhood in order to punish it for the sin of overthrowing slavery. The United States waited until 1862. This delay further distanced Haiti from all the benefits of trade that accompany recognized nationhood. Thus, much of Haiti’s poverty resulted from burdens imposed by outsiders.

And this brings me to Iowa pigs. The former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, wrote a book called “Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization” (2000), which claims Iowa pigs impoverished Haiti even more.

According to Aristide, prior to the 1980s, Haiti used very hardy local (Creole) pigs that could withstand tropical heat and eat almost anything.

But, in 1982, international agencies, many influenced by the United States, convinced Haitians to slaughter their pigs because of concerns about a swine flu epidemic. The United States promised that better pigs would be substituted, and these came mostly from Iowa.

However, Iowa pigs required clean water, which was unavailable to 80 percent of Haitians. Special roofed pens had to be built because Iowa pigs were susceptible to the sun. While Haitian pigs ate anything, feed for American pigs cost $90 per year in a country where the annual per capita income was $130.

If a pig sacrifice helped to liberate Haiti in 1791, Haitians were being sacrificed to American pigs in the 1980s. Aristide claims that Haitian peasants lost $600 million in this fiasco (“Eyes of the Heart,” page 14).

So, if Robertson had read Haitian history, he might have spotted a club of Christian slave-trading nations, and not God, shaking the foundation of Haiti’s society and economy to this day.

Hector Avalos, a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University, writes monthly for The Tribune. His columns appear the first Sunday of the month.

Doc,

Always great to hear from you. I always enjoy reverse engineering. And Billy Bob Robertson always is entertaining as well. That guy serves up a lot of nonsense for the consumption of the rubes…when he isn't rebuking hurricanes and taking out third world dictators, he still managed in his spare time to raise over two billion dollars for the relief of the poor over last couple of decades. Puzzling how crazy people do things like that.. And about those evil Christians who in the last several weeks have donated nearly another billion for Haiti relief….must be residue guilt over what those French Christians did don't cha think? I used to be similarly afflicted.

Then, I became enlightened by science. Since then, I've come to realize compassion and altruism is completely wasted upon the lesser evolved races. All the money spent on those "yard apes" has been mostly wasted. By any objective standard, continuing to subsidize genetically deficient sub-species is a waste of time and money. In fact supporting humans who can't seem to get it together either before their African Muslim brothers sold them into slavery, nor after more than a century of welfare, should be cut loose. Nature should be allowed to take its course.

I agree with that Darwin fellow. "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones which look like the savages in structure] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

That earthquake is merely expediting Darwin's interrupted good works.

Maybe we should keep a few Haitians alive and put them in the zoo like Darwin's buddies did to the Australian Aborigines during the World's Fair in the last century…and if they become extinct we could employ the services of a good taxidermist (as was done to some Aborigines) so as to keep alive at least the image of a Haitian so our grand children can get a glimpse what we overcame.

I am appalled as you must be to see some deluded zealots try to adopt Haitian orphans…a genetic cruelty which will just keep the legacy of those savage races extant way beyond what Darwin intended.

As to that slavery thing, perhaps if we have to keep around the legacy of those savage races, then "…if we are all biological accidents" as Darwin teaches, "why can't the white accidents own and sell black accidents?"

Anyhow… always nice to hear from you. I was beginning to doubt my resolve.

Mickelson

BTW… it's always gratifying to see atheists affirming competing religions. Your support of the religion of Voodoo is indeed heartwarming. Certainly a feeble step in the right direction. A few more natural disasters like this and you may be found humming "nearer my God to Thee"….

Now if we could just hold his impeachment hearing and assemble the firing squad, maybe the country would sit up and take notice that the Constitution is not to be trifled with. One can only hope I'm afraid, after all, Jorge the Younger Shrub is still on the loose as well.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The weather here just continues to be awful. We did not leave the farm over Christmas, then I worked in the cold on Saturday and Sunday. New Year's week, it was at least -15 several times. On New Years Eve, we drove down to southwest Iowa to do Christmas with my family. It was very pleasant, everyone made it for the occasion on New Year's day. Ate to much, laughed a lot, had a great time.

As I've mentioned earlier, I've been working on a project in my shop for several months. One friend gave me a hydraulic cylinder. Another friend traded some cutting torch work for a piece of I-beam. In an old shed at my dad's place was an old hydraulic control valve off of a combine header control, and I remembered an old sprayer frame in the weeds down at my folks, so I scrounged all the stuff together and built this,.........

So, there you have one of my excuses for why I haven't spent much time at this blog lately.

It's designed to use the hydraulic power from a tractor. Can be used horizontally or vertically. It got one coat of primer and some very flat black paint I bought on sale at the John Deere store.

Now if I could just complete some of my other long list of projects I've been accumulating pieces for, a smoker from pipeline pipe, a large portable grill from an old fuel barrel. Fixing a 4-wheeler that a friend gave us, and the big one, finishing that(those) Oliver tractors.

Happy New Year everybody. I'm home sick today. Have some kind of stomach flu. Went to work in the blowing snow. Fed the cattle, weaned pigs, then came home and spent the rest of the day in bed or in the recliner, when my back couldn't stand laying in bed any more.

BTW, it was between -15 and -18 when I put that thing together in Dad's yard, Friday morning. Man did I miss my heated shop.